The fact that they have to bring in 12 years old to militia check points as well as their proxies from Iraq and Afghanistan is also another testament to their wild unpopularity and lack of support among their own population. The daily executions show that the regime is not even trying to garner goodwill from its own people. This is a regime that is finished, it’s just a matter of time for complete dissolution.
... bring in 12 years old to... Where is any credible evidence to this allegation? A lot of fog of war going on but let's base our discussion on proven and reliable facts...
So they have a million man army/IRGC and have at least a many basij and they haven't sustained any heavy losses as there hasn't been a ground invasion and you think they need 12 year old to fight whom exactly. There hasn't been any meaningful uprising or opposition even where you would need that. This isnt Ukraine where 4 years of bloody conflict has thinned the ranks. Use some basic logic.
Jean-Marc, I'm old I remember the Iran Iraq 8-year war. Iran used them for years there. This is proven fact. And they are a lot worse off now than they were then.
Jeff Thanks for a comment more respectful that other comments I've got on this link... comments which don't invite a collaborative exchange between parties.
That being said, yes I'm also old enough to remember the Iran-Iraq 8 year war. Obviously Iran is severely weakened by US bombardments. Is Iran now in a worse situation then at the end of it's war with Iraq? Maybe or maybe not...
But all governments/leaders motivated by their religion - such as Shia - tend to be difficult parties to deal with and to get rid off...
Yes, and they will never fully go away. Politicians use these institutions to sow discontent for their advantage unfortunately.
But one must be strong in their beliefs and commitments. If not, one becomes a nihilist and then during hard times will perish. Nihilists can be talked into anything, why not, they are empty. Waiting to be filled.
Our culture is all we really have. From one's culture comes one's spiritualism.
This is what is missing in today's great materialistic advanced well fed societies. Being well fed is important but just as important if really not more so is one's spiritualism.
Yes, my friend we must always be willing to talk to each other and show each other respect. Thank you for your kind words.
Now using cluster bombs is not acceptable but that does not justify destroying electrical infrastructures.
As for crime against humanity, a simple AI query states that:
Crimes Against Humanity: If the destruction is part of a "widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". This includes "inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health".
War Crimes: Specifically through "intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects" or "destroying or seizing the property of an adversary unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict".
Starvation of Civilians: IHL prohibits attacking, destroying, or rendering useless "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". Electricity is often critical for water supplies, heating, and healthcare.
Hilarious. Iranians aren't savages. The Iranian regime is. And it takes a lot of heavy lifting and ignorance to equate the US or its government to the Iranian regime.
Hilarious. You saying something is a war crime is not the same thing as it being a war crime @Joseph. It's hilarious how you think whatever you write suddenly becomes a fact.
You silly self-centered Western poseur morons mistake your ignorance for knowledge and your empty arrogance for insight.
"Tearing down the electrical network... A war crime per definition of the International Courts"
Are you a big expert on this? Which specific provision of which treaty prohibits this? Which international court has ruled on this, what is the exact date and ruling?
Were the Allied bombings of German railroads, bridges, powerplants violations of international law too?
Or is it rather that infrastructure that serves dual civilian and military purposes is a legitimate military target according to Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions?
As for crime against humanity, a simple AI query states that:
Crimes Against Humanity: If the destruction is part of a "widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". This includes "inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health".
War Crimes: Specifically through "intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects" or "destroying or seizing the property of an adversary unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict".
Starvation of Civilians: IHL prohibits attacking, destroying, or rendering useless "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". Electricity is often critical for water supplies, heating, and healthcare.
So pls check a little before posting any nonsense...
In other words, items of dual civilian and military use, like railroads, powerplants and bridges are indeed legitimate military targets as specified by Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions
Article 51:
"considered as indiscriminate:
5(b) an attack ... which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated"
Totally. All signs are that the regime is totally intact and now holding the Straits hostage without any plan. Zineb is brilliant but she is just dancing around the point.
surely unless the US actively supports (by arming resistance and/or working with Pavlavi), or israel is there to take out IRGC/Basij and their Arab militant collaborators in the street, Iranians would be committing mass suicide - and many have no doubt that the regime - even in its current weakened state - would be willing to massacre civilians in the hundreds of thousands.
I can understand that Iran’s status in the region is much degraded - it now has all the Gulf States thinking of it as an existential threat to them too.
But for the sake of the Iranian people, the majority of whom want the Islamic regime gone, let’s not pretend there’s “regime change”.
Wishful thinking in the face of an armed regime prepared to slaughter 30,000+ unarmed protesters in the streets, and thousands more awaiting their deaths in jails.
Correct only in that the tightening of financial sanctions is still the slow way of strangling support for such a murderous regime.
HOWEVER, what all commentators are studiously avoiding is the ongoing elephant in room stranglehold that Islamic VOODOO retains in the Iranian population.
Two other indications of the regime's weakness are the abandoned Basij checkpoints (after persistent drone attacks on them) and the inability to enforce the hijab on Iranian women.
This last can be seen in everyday images from Iranian cities, for example from Reuters or AP, as well as the regime propaganda video below. Only 4 years ago Basij murdered Mahsa Amini for not covering her hair properly.
That's how scared the Islamic Republic is of its own population.
„Its survival depends on three pillars — an ideology, a patronage network and a coercive apparatus drawing legitimacy from a founding idea.“
Yes, and Trump is now strengthening, not weakening those pillars. US attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure demonstrate to ordinary Iranians that the IRGC’s ideological belief that the Western world hates Iran and wants to keep Iran poor and miserable is correct. Iran is now generating billions in additional oil revenue which is used for patronage, the opposition is cut off from economic opportunities to buy influence. The security apparatus can now derive additional legitimacy from defending Iran from bombing the same way the German people perversely became more dependent on the Nazi regime due to Allied bombing.
Sorry but I totally disagree with this analysis... Seems to be much more an "academic demonstration" than something related to daily facts... For example Step 1 should be followed by step 2 and then step 3...
Now the leaders have crushed any opposition and believing that people making further demonstrations in the streets will convince their leaders to step down...
I believe that, at this time, the only thing that matters - for the population - is to survive bombs, find some food, survive for the next day...
You can read the mood in Iran from the rhetoric: instead of using Islam as the foundation of rhetoric, the Islamic regime’s propaganda has shifted to “Iran will endure because it is a 2,500 year old civilisation”. That is, the civilisation which Islam crushed. Last legs.
Zineb Riboua is right that Iran is a revolutionary state sustained by ideology, patronage and coercion. What she omits is that this is not unique to Iran. The United States itself emerged as a revolutionary state, once viewed by United Kingdom elites as a rebellious insurgency rather than a legitimate polity.
Revolutionary DNA does not disappear. It is institutionalised. Iran’s 1979 order embeds Twelver Shi’a eschatology; America’s founding fused Enlightenment ideals with enduring evangelical religious currents that still shape segments of its foreign policy discourse.
History complicates the narrative further. The 1953 Iranian coup d’état, backed by Central Intelligence Agency and MI6, overthrew an elected government and helped produce the very revolutionary system now under critique.
The point is not equivalence but symmetry. Frameworks used to diagnose instability in Iran can be applied elsewhere. Revolutionary states endure not because of their founding myths, but because they retain the capacity to reproduce legitimacy, distribute resources and sustain power under pressure.
The real question is not who is revolutionary, but whose system is more resilient today. America or Iran?
Iran is revolutionary in the sense that it wants to “export its revolution” and actively promote state change and social transformation through active subversion efforts aimed at upsetting the existing state order.
The US is a revolutionary state in the sense that it hopes its model will please others enough that they would voluntarily transform their societies using the American example, usually while maintaining existing state order.
There is a huge difference between the two.
Iran is interested in creating an empire and passing orders. The US, for most of its history, was isolationist and was uninterested in world affairs, only brought into it by the threat posed by revolutionary socialism and its main sponsor, the Soviet Union.
Communist China is not a revolutionary state in international terms; it does not want to “export its revolution” and is not committed to the cause so much as it wants to do what the US itself is doing. They are cultivating influence abroad yes, but that is a world away from aiming to impose a world order run out from Beijing on Chinese communist principles.
There is a reason the Arab sheikhdoms like the US and not Iran, despite Iran being the Islamic regime. Increasing Iranian influence simply poses a threat to existing state order, whereas the Americans are happy to let the existing order be.
The meaning of the term “Revolutionary” in this sense is determined not by desire for ideological change, so much as propensity to maintain or dilute existing state order in a region or multiple regions. The Arabs wouldn’t have a problem if the Iranians are Islamic; they are worried they will be taken over by a clerical regime not answerable locally.
> "The US is a revolutionary state in the sense that it hopes its model will please others enough that they would voluntarily transform their societies using the American example, usually while maintaining existing state order."
I think the American Empire has been net beneficial to the world in a lot of ways, but I'm really scratching my head as to how the Iranians have been more aggressive about 'exporting the revolution'. The alleged American tendency toward isolationism seems way overhyped to me, given that the era of Manifest Destiny segued pretty neatly into the era of the Monroe Doctrine which segued pretty neatly into the era of the World Wars and then Global Anti-Communism. (Not that I disagree that Communism was an existential threat. A point I keep raising with nationalists is that the only thing that can suppress the emergence of global empire is another global empire.)
Exporting their revolution across the Middle East and the wider Islamic World, is what I was referring to.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was perhaps the first time in the modern era that a clerical class had usurped direct political power in a state and turned it revolutionary.
For all their weaknesses, the other states in the Middle East are largely non-revolutionary, and they weren’t ideologically bent towards exporting their state organisation across the world (they did invest heavily in Islamic proselytization overseas, perhaps out of a sense of naïveté; and when it turned to be a political hot potato; they were amongst the first to pull the plug on the whole thing).
For them, their survival as nation-states is most important to them and is their primary incentive; whereas this is not true for the Islamic Republic.
For the Islamic Republic, the survival of Iran is less important than the propagation of revolutionary Islam (a political variant preferred by clergy) and Iran was but a base for them to operate out of. And being an ideology with a maximalist objective, they could operate from any spot on earth that was giving them no trouble; Iran itself was secondary. They could move to Afghanistan, for instance, and they’d be none the worse for that.
America figures here not because it is directly affected, but because of the historic overhang of it being actively involved in the region to combat communism. It is worth remembering that the Iranian Revolution was at first a leftist revolution; which was swiftly overthrown in turn by the Islamists.
In the regional context, America is seen not as an imperial state but rather as the necessary outside presence required to maintain the common discipline. Courtesy her navy, the US keeps the sea lanes open, and helps keep local states stable through intelligence sharing and state support. Importantly, the US is seen as not eager to export their ideology to the Middle East, even as they got carried away by the early 2000s propaganda about “spreading democracy”, which ended up giving rising to Islamist populist movements such as and including MB and ISIS.
America has had the decency to backtrack on these faulty approaches, and stuck to providing state support to the state actors most interested in providing stability and order to the people, even as they are authoritarian. The only successful democracy in the wider Asian/Middle Eastern region happens to be India, where political democracy was preceded by multiple rounds of internally generated social reform, which prepared the population for utilising democratic means for good social outcomes.
None of that has happened in the Middle East so far. “Democracy”, in that region, only means popular authoritarianism. This is what you see in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I've heard it argued that modern-day Iraq is relatively stable and democratic at this point, it's just not a *liberal* democracy.
I'm also not sure that the Twelvers moving to Afghanistan wouldn't somewhat impede their uranium-enrichment efforts, absent substantial oil revenues to fund the project. But those are details, I guess.
Iraq’s stability is underwritten by American assurances. Among the countries most exposed to Iran’s problems today on multiple fronts is Iraq. Wouldn’t happen to a stable, resilient place.
For the Twelvers, the uranium enrichment and oil revenues are just aids to their project. They draw their strength from religious commitments, and the most complex parts of their state structure has to do with the governance and management of their seminaries and other religious institutions.
This revolutionary apparatus can be placed anywhere and be a menace to concerned states and peoples. All they need is a bunch of people crazy enough to believe their project and indoctrinated enough to wait for an opportunity to act out.
The distinction does not withstand scrutiny. The United States has not confined itself to passive inspiration; it has repeatedly shaped political outcomes abroad through military, covert and economic means. From Manifest Destiny to Cold War interventions, expansion and external influence have been persistent features of American statecraft. Sachs estimates at least seventy regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989, with totals plausibly exceeding one hundred when covert and post-Cold War cases are included (Sachs, 2023; O’Rourke, 2018).
Recent interventions in Venezuela (2026) and Iran (2025–26) reinforce this pattern.
Bibliography
O’Rourke, L. (2018) Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sachs, J. (2023) The Price of Intervention: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Power.
The main thrust of your observations, and figures regarding the US and Iranian State interventions is correct.
The USA, largely through the CIA, has either instigated or supported any number of regime changes since WW2, to achieve its international political objectives.
However, perhaps the difference is that whereas Iran wishes to impose a global, hard, uncompromising, religiously inspired theocratic regime, the US only usually moves to retain or regain the balance of strategic control in a region where it perceives its opponents are gaining too much influence.
In this context the crux of Epic Fury, and previously the attack on Venezuela, can be seen as a means to confront and rebalance the growing soft power influence of specifically China in those countries.
Importantly, for those living in the West, the US ‘democratic’ model isn’t going to tell us what God we need to believe in, cocoon our women in a black shrouds when out in public, marry our 9 year old daughters to 70 year old men, or forcibly tax us if we don’t subscribe to the State religion.
I appreciate this is an unfair caricature of a broad religious and cultural Society, but hopefully makes the point that though all freedom are conditional, some freedoms are more conditional than others.
It is likely that the US is less of the main actor here despite being the most visible one. Iran’s is a revolutionary regime; and the main Arab countries and Israel are status-quo players and pragmatists (this explains how Israel is dealing with former Al Qaeda leaders in Syria; and the Gulf’s mix of hyper modernity and conservatism). The US simply happens to be the most effective agent here, currently being used to drive out from power the least pragmatic and most revolutionary element here.
It does seem like their military strength has been seriously degraded. Good. But now that they’ve discovered they can basically control the world’s economy via the strait of Hormuz, it seems to me that they’re actually stronger?
As I wrote a few days ago, the “no regime change from air” gospel ignores Japan, 1945; the US has lacked the political will to go full Genghis with the USAF, without going nuclear, until now.
The fact that they have to bring in 12 years old to militia check points as well as their proxies from Iraq and Afghanistan is also another testament to their wild unpopularity and lack of support among their own population. The daily executions show that the regime is not even trying to garner goodwill from its own people. This is a regime that is finished, it’s just a matter of time for complete dissolution.
Amen brother getting close.
... bring in 12 years old to... Where is any credible evidence to this allegation? A lot of fog of war going on but let's base our discussion on proven and reliable facts...
This is in fact, very credible : https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/30/iran-military-stepping-up-child-recruitment
So they have a million man army/IRGC and have at least a many basij and they haven't sustained any heavy losses as there hasn't been a ground invasion and you think they need 12 year old to fight whom exactly. There hasn't been any meaningful uprising or opposition even where you would need that. This isnt Ukraine where 4 years of bloody conflict has thinned the ranks. Use some basic logic.
Can you please stop bringing logic and reasonable arguments into the discussion, people trying to have their preexisting opinions confirmed here.
Read the room man.
Jean-Marc, I'm old I remember the Iran Iraq 8-year war. Iran used them for years there. This is proven fact. And they are a lot worse off now than they were then.
Jeff Thanks for a comment more respectful that other comments I've got on this link... comments which don't invite a collaborative exchange between parties.
That being said, yes I'm also old enough to remember the Iran-Iraq 8 year war. Obviously Iran is severely weakened by US bombardments. Is Iran now in a worse situation then at the end of it's war with Iraq? Maybe or maybe not...
But all governments/leaders motivated by their religion - such as Shia - tend to be difficult parties to deal with and to get rid off...
Your welcome sir.
Yes, and they will never fully go away. Politicians use these institutions to sow discontent for their advantage unfortunately.
But one must be strong in their beliefs and commitments. If not, one becomes a nihilist and then during hard times will perish. Nihilists can be talked into anything, why not, they are empty. Waiting to be filled.
Our culture is all we really have. From one's culture comes one's spiritualism.
This is what is missing in today's great materialistic advanced well fed societies. Being well fed is important but just as important if really not more so is one's spiritualism.
Yes, my friend we must always be willing to talk to each other and show each other respect. Thank you for your kind words.
Zineb, great work (as usual). FYI - Trump has the option of disabling Iran's electric grid for a few weeks, not months, to close the deal.
How to black out Tehran for 30 days
https://directorblue.substack.com/p/how-to-black-out-tehran-for-30-days
Yes... Tearing down the electrical network... A war crime per definition of the International Courts.
What an option you're moving forward in order to support a point of view on which I disagree totally
With all due respect, Jean-Marc - Iran has committed countless war crimes since 1979. I've documented their Hall of Shame here.
Iran's Top 20 Attacks On The West
It's long past time to stop suicidal mystics with nukes.
https://directorblue.substack.com/p/irans-top-20-attacks-on-the-west?utm_source=publication-search
Hilarious. Now tell me about Iranian cluster bombs. LOL.
Absent double standards you Western poseurs would have no standards. It's increasingly pathetic.
Iranian cluster bombs... What about https://imeu.org/resources/key-issues/quick-facts-israels-illegal-use-of-cluster-bombs/460 ?
Now using cluster bombs is not acceptable but that does not justify destroying electrical infrastructures.
As for crime against humanity, a simple AI query states that:
Crimes Against Humanity: If the destruction is part of a "widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". This includes "inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health".
War Crimes: Specifically through "intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects" or "destroying or seizing the property of an adversary unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict".
Starvation of Civilians: IHL prohibits attacking, destroying, or rendering useless "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". Electricity is often critical for water supplies, heating, and healthcare.
And probably more expert than Les Vitailles...
Literally every tactic Islamists use are war crimes, from "martyrdom" to human shields. How does one deal with that? I propose a simple approach.
How to Black Out Tehran for 30 Days:
https://directorblue.substack.com/p/how-to-black-out-tehran-for-30-days
Hilarious. Iranians aren't savages. The Iranian regime is. And it takes a lot of heavy lifting and ignorance to equate the US or its government to the Iranian regime.
Hilarious. You saying something is a war crime is not the same thing as it being a war crime @Joseph. It's hilarious how you think whatever you write suddenly becomes a fact.
You silly self-centered Western poseur morons mistake your ignorance for knowledge and your empty arrogance for insight.
Nothing funnier.
"Tearing down the electrical network... A war crime per definition of the International Courts"
Are you a big expert on this? Which specific provision of which treaty prohibits this? Which international court has ruled on this, what is the exact date and ruling?
Were the Allied bombings of German railroads, bridges, powerplants violations of international law too?
Or is it rather that infrastructure that serves dual civilian and military purposes is a legitimate military target according to Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions?
As for crime against humanity, a simple AI query states that:
Crimes Against Humanity: If the destruction is part of a "widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population". This includes "inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health".
War Crimes: Specifically through "intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects" or "destroying or seizing the property of an adversary unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of the conflict".
Starvation of Civilians: IHL prohibits attacking, destroying, or rendering useless "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". Electricity is often critical for water supplies, heating, and healthcare.
So pls check a little before posting any nonsense...
In other words, items of dual civilian and military use, like railroads, powerplants and bridges are indeed legitimate military targets as specified by Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions
Article 51:
"considered as indiscriminate:
5(b) an attack ... which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated"
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-51
You will be astonished that AI is not an authoritative legal ruling 😆
“Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without an accordion”
General Norman Schwartzkopf
5 tons of copium detected.
Totally. All signs are that the regime is totally intact and now holding the Straits hostage without any plan. Zineb is brilliant but she is just dancing around the point.
surely unless the US actively supports (by arming resistance and/or working with Pavlavi), or israel is there to take out IRGC/Basij and their Arab militant collaborators in the street, Iranians would be committing mass suicide - and many have no doubt that the regime - even in its current weakened state - would be willing to massacre civilians in the hundreds of thousands.
I can understand that Iran’s status in the region is much degraded - it now has all the Gulf States thinking of it as an existential threat to them too.
But for the sake of the Iranian people, the majority of whom want the Islamic regime gone, let’s not pretend there’s “regime change”.
Wishful thinking in the face of an armed regime prepared to slaughter 30,000+ unarmed protesters in the streets, and thousands more awaiting their deaths in jails.
Correct only in that the tightening of financial sanctions is still the slow way of strangling support for such a murderous regime.
HOWEVER, what all commentators are studiously avoiding is the ongoing elephant in room stranglehold that Islamic VOODOO retains in the Iranian population.
Good luck with that.
Two other indications of the regime's weakness are the abandoned Basij checkpoints (after persistent drone attacks on them) and the inability to enforce the hijab on Iranian women.
This last can be seen in everyday images from Iranian cities, for example from Reuters or AP, as well as the regime propaganda video below. Only 4 years ago Basij murdered Mahsa Amini for not covering her hair properly.
That's how scared the Islamic Republic is of its own population.
https://x.com/JZarif/status/2035300681960013935/mediaViewer?currentTweet=2035300681960013935¤tTweetUser=JZarif
„Its survival depends on three pillars — an ideology, a patronage network and a coercive apparatus drawing legitimacy from a founding idea.“
Yes, and Trump is now strengthening, not weakening those pillars. US attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure demonstrate to ordinary Iranians that the IRGC’s ideological belief that the Western world hates Iran and wants to keep Iran poor and miserable is correct. Iran is now generating billions in additional oil revenue which is used for patronage, the opposition is cut off from economic opportunities to buy influence. The security apparatus can now derive additional legitimacy from defending Iran from bombing the same way the German people perversely became more dependent on the Nazi regime due to Allied bombing.
You're not wrong, or at least it's a plausible line of analysis. How would you recommend approaching the problem?
Complete horseshit.
Sorry but I totally disagree with this analysis... Seems to be much more an "academic demonstration" than something related to daily facts... For example Step 1 should be followed by step 2 and then step 3...
Now the leaders have crushed any opposition and believing that people making further demonstrations in the streets will convince their leaders to step down...
I believe that, at this time, the only thing that matters - for the population - is to survive bombs, find some food, survive for the next day...
You can read the mood in Iran from the rhetoric: instead of using Islam as the foundation of rhetoric, the Islamic regime’s propaganda has shifted to “Iran will endure because it is a 2,500 year old civilisation”. That is, the civilisation which Islam crushed. Last legs.
Zineb Riboua is right that Iran is a revolutionary state sustained by ideology, patronage and coercion. What she omits is that this is not unique to Iran. The United States itself emerged as a revolutionary state, once viewed by United Kingdom elites as a rebellious insurgency rather than a legitimate polity.
Revolutionary DNA does not disappear. It is institutionalised. Iran’s 1979 order embeds Twelver Shi’a eschatology; America’s founding fused Enlightenment ideals with enduring evangelical religious currents that still shape segments of its foreign policy discourse.
History complicates the narrative further. The 1953 Iranian coup d’état, backed by Central Intelligence Agency and MI6, overthrew an elected government and helped produce the very revolutionary system now under critique.
The point is not equivalence but symmetry. Frameworks used to diagnose instability in Iran can be applied elsewhere. Revolutionary states endure not because of their founding myths, but because they retain the capacity to reproduce legitimacy, distribute resources and sustain power under pressure.
The real question is not who is revolutionary, but whose system is more resilient today. America or Iran?
Iran is revolutionary in the sense that it wants to “export its revolution” and actively promote state change and social transformation through active subversion efforts aimed at upsetting the existing state order.
The US is a revolutionary state in the sense that it hopes its model will please others enough that they would voluntarily transform their societies using the American example, usually while maintaining existing state order.
There is a huge difference between the two.
Iran is interested in creating an empire and passing orders. The US, for most of its history, was isolationist and was uninterested in world affairs, only brought into it by the threat posed by revolutionary socialism and its main sponsor, the Soviet Union.
Communist China is not a revolutionary state in international terms; it does not want to “export its revolution” and is not committed to the cause so much as it wants to do what the US itself is doing. They are cultivating influence abroad yes, but that is a world away from aiming to impose a world order run out from Beijing on Chinese communist principles.
There is a reason the Arab sheikhdoms like the US and not Iran, despite Iran being the Islamic regime. Increasing Iranian influence simply poses a threat to existing state order, whereas the Americans are happy to let the existing order be.
The meaning of the term “Revolutionary” in this sense is determined not by desire for ideological change, so much as propensity to maintain or dilute existing state order in a region or multiple regions. The Arabs wouldn’t have a problem if the Iranians are Islamic; they are worried they will be taken over by a clerical regime not answerable locally.
> "The US is a revolutionary state in the sense that it hopes its model will please others enough that they would voluntarily transform their societies using the American example, usually while maintaining existing state order."
I think the American Empire has been net beneficial to the world in a lot of ways, but I'm really scratching my head as to how the Iranians have been more aggressive about 'exporting the revolution'. The alleged American tendency toward isolationism seems way overhyped to me, given that the era of Manifest Destiny segued pretty neatly into the era of the Monroe Doctrine which segued pretty neatly into the era of the World Wars and then Global Anti-Communism. (Not that I disagree that Communism was an existential threat. A point I keep raising with nationalists is that the only thing that can suppress the emergence of global empire is another global empire.)
Exporting their revolution across the Middle East and the wider Islamic World, is what I was referring to.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was perhaps the first time in the modern era that a clerical class had usurped direct political power in a state and turned it revolutionary.
For all their weaknesses, the other states in the Middle East are largely non-revolutionary, and they weren’t ideologically bent towards exporting their state organisation across the world (they did invest heavily in Islamic proselytization overseas, perhaps out of a sense of naïveté; and when it turned to be a political hot potato; they were amongst the first to pull the plug on the whole thing).
For them, their survival as nation-states is most important to them and is their primary incentive; whereas this is not true for the Islamic Republic.
For the Islamic Republic, the survival of Iran is less important than the propagation of revolutionary Islam (a political variant preferred by clergy) and Iran was but a base for them to operate out of. And being an ideology with a maximalist objective, they could operate from any spot on earth that was giving them no trouble; Iran itself was secondary. They could move to Afghanistan, for instance, and they’d be none the worse for that.
America figures here not because it is directly affected, but because of the historic overhang of it being actively involved in the region to combat communism. It is worth remembering that the Iranian Revolution was at first a leftist revolution; which was swiftly overthrown in turn by the Islamists.
In the regional context, America is seen not as an imperial state but rather as the necessary outside presence required to maintain the common discipline. Courtesy her navy, the US keeps the sea lanes open, and helps keep local states stable through intelligence sharing and state support. Importantly, the US is seen as not eager to export their ideology to the Middle East, even as they got carried away by the early 2000s propaganda about “spreading democracy”, which ended up giving rising to Islamist populist movements such as and including MB and ISIS.
America has had the decency to backtrack on these faulty approaches, and stuck to providing state support to the state actors most interested in providing stability and order to the people, even as they are authoritarian. The only successful democracy in the wider Asian/Middle Eastern region happens to be India, where political democracy was preceded by multiple rounds of internally generated social reform, which prepared the population for utilising democratic means for good social outcomes.
None of that has happened in the Middle East so far. “Democracy”, in that region, only means popular authoritarianism. This is what you see in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I've heard it argued that modern-day Iraq is relatively stable and democratic at this point, it's just not a *liberal* democracy.
I'm also not sure that the Twelvers moving to Afghanistan wouldn't somewhat impede their uranium-enrichment efforts, absent substantial oil revenues to fund the project. But those are details, I guess.
Iraq’s stability is underwritten by American assurances. Among the countries most exposed to Iran’s problems today on multiple fronts is Iraq. Wouldn’t happen to a stable, resilient place.
For the Twelvers, the uranium enrichment and oil revenues are just aids to their project. They draw their strength from religious commitments, and the most complex parts of their state structure has to do with the governance and management of their seminaries and other religious institutions.
This revolutionary apparatus can be placed anywhere and be a menace to concerned states and peoples. All they need is a bunch of people crazy enough to believe their project and indoctrinated enough to wait for an opportunity to act out.
The distinction does not withstand scrutiny. The United States has not confined itself to passive inspiration; it has repeatedly shaped political outcomes abroad through military, covert and economic means. From Manifest Destiny to Cold War interventions, expansion and external influence have been persistent features of American statecraft. Sachs estimates at least seventy regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989, with totals plausibly exceeding one hundred when covert and post-Cold War cases are included (Sachs, 2023; O’Rourke, 2018).
Recent interventions in Venezuela (2026) and Iran (2025–26) reinforce this pattern.
Bibliography
O’Rourke, L. (2018) Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Sachs, J. (2023) The Price of Intervention: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Power.
The main thrust of your observations, and figures regarding the US and Iranian State interventions is correct.
The USA, largely through the CIA, has either instigated or supported any number of regime changes since WW2, to achieve its international political objectives.
However, perhaps the difference is that whereas Iran wishes to impose a global, hard, uncompromising, religiously inspired theocratic regime, the US only usually moves to retain or regain the balance of strategic control in a region where it perceives its opponents are gaining too much influence.
In this context the crux of Epic Fury, and previously the attack on Venezuela, can be seen as a means to confront and rebalance the growing soft power influence of specifically China in those countries.
Importantly, for those living in the West, the US ‘democratic’ model isn’t going to tell us what God we need to believe in, cocoon our women in a black shrouds when out in public, marry our 9 year old daughters to 70 year old men, or forcibly tax us if we don’t subscribe to the State religion.
I appreciate this is an unfair caricature of a broad religious and cultural Society, but hopefully makes the point that though all freedom are conditional, some freedoms are more conditional than others.
It is likely that the US is less of the main actor here despite being the most visible one. Iran’s is a revolutionary regime; and the main Arab countries and Israel are status-quo players and pragmatists (this explains how Israel is dealing with former Al Qaeda leaders in Syria; and the Gulf’s mix of hyper modernity and conservatism). The US simply happens to be the most effective agent here, currently being used to drive out from power the least pragmatic and most revolutionary element here.
You are describing counter-revolutionary action, in both cases.
lol
It does seem like their military strength has been seriously degraded. Good. But now that they’ve discovered they can basically control the world’s economy via the strait of Hormuz, it seems to me that they’re actually stronger?
Tell me I’m wrong, please. I hope so
As I wrote a few days ago, the “no regime change from air” gospel ignores Japan, 1945; the US has lacked the political will to go full Genghis with the USAF, without going nuclear, until now.
True. Iran’s 40 day clock expires this week.
Hilarious. You know as much about international law as you know about Israel -- nothing real.